California is rapidly mobilizing to become an exporter of prison inmates. Over the years many prisons have paid to have their prisoners held in counties and cities, typically within the state, but Governor Schwarzenegger of California is taking steps to export 5,000 to 7,000 inmates to private prisons in other states due to over crowding in California.
He claims that he has no choice as the prisons are over crowded and the courts are threatening to start forcing the state to release prisoners or turn them away at the gates.
Among other things civil rights activists complain that prisoners in over crowded prisons are less likely to receive rehabilitation, which may account for the extremely high rate of recidivism in California. This has helped to push the California prison population up to 172,000 inmates out of approximately 2.2 million nation wide, which is almost 10% of all the prisoners in the country.
States eager to take on good paying prison jobs that Californians do not want have signed on to take these prisoners into their own private prisons. The entire scenario raises many troubling questions that no one can answer yet, such as:
- Where will these exported prisoners live when they get out of jail?
- What type of recidivism will be encouraged by transplanting prisoners away from their family and support networks?
- Will the prisoners left behind in the over crowded prisons get early releases forced by the courts?
- How much money is the California economy losing to other states by sending their prisoners abroad?
There's no clear answer, but California is not alone in this type of problem. Prison populations are growing across the US. Its also a problem that is extremely problematic in the United Kingdom where judges are being forced to turn new prisoners away from prisons due to over crowding in that country.
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